Irish newspaper editor suspended as lawyer urges ban on Kate pics

A FRENCH court is deciding whether to ban further publishing of photos showing the Duchess of Cambridge topless - as two more media outlets ran the images.

As the legal action began on Monday in a French court, in Dublin the editor of an Irish newspaper which ran the photos twice was suspended and the newspaper threatened with closure.

In a day of high drama Aurelien Hamelle, the lawyer representing the Duke and Duchess William and Kate at the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Nanterre yesterday, called on the court to block further publishing.

The legal move came from what the royal couple had earlier described as a “grotesque” breach of privacy by the French gossip magazine Closer for publishing 14 images of Kate topless while she sunbaked by a pool during a private holiday in Provence in south of France.

The magazine hit the stands yesterday and was selling out across France as controversy over the photos raged.

Among the biggest buyers were collectors and British tourists. Some of the images have her topless while one has her bikini bottoms partially pulled down while she applied lotion.

Mr Hamelle told the French court he was seeking $6550 in damages from Closer and an injunction forcing the magazine to stop publishing the issue with the photos. He also asked the court to fine the magazine $13,100 a day for each day the injunction is not respected and another $131,000 if the photos are sold.

He described the pictures as taken “in a highly intimate moment during a scene of married life and have no place on the cover of a magazine”. He also described Kate as a “young woman not an object”.

The lawyer drew a parallel with the “fatal hunt” by paparazzi that led to the death of William's mother Princess Diana, as he urged the presiding judge to grant an injunction against all republishing of the photographs in print and in digital form and to ban their resale.

Mr Hamelle said they would not bother asking to have the current issue of Closer withdrawn from sale.

Mondadori, the Italian publishing house behind Closer, and Chi magazine in Italy which has also yesterday published 26 pages of the images, told the court the photos were not theirs to sell.

Mondadori lawyer Delphine Pando told the court they were not the owners of the photographs.

The royal couple had instructed Mr Hamelle to seek the stiffest penalty possible which could include jail for both the photographer and editor.

The case was adjourned till Tuesday when a decision will be made.

Lawyers for William and Kate also launched a second court case to prosecute the photographer behind the images, believed to have been taken with a long lens from up to a kilometre away. The photographer was named as Valerie Suau, nicknamed ‘the sewer’ although she denies producing anything ‘explicit’. She went into hiding yesterday as other media pursued her.

St James Palace confirmed the papers were lodged with the French Prosecution Department yesterday.

Meanwhile, the Irish Daily Star has been threatened with closure for re-running the pictures and its editor Michael O’Kane suspended as the scandal of the topless images continued.

In a brief statement, Independent Star the company which runs the newspaper, said the editor was suspended pending an investigation into why the newspaper chose to re-run the pictures after already running them over the weekend.

O’Kane at the time they were first published said he thought they were in the public’s interest, were not different to images of any other celebrity like Rihanna and were good for sales.

"Independent Star Limited has suspended editor Michael O'Kane with immediate effect, pending an investigation into the circumstances that led to the Irish Daily Star re-publishing pages from the French magazine 'Closer', which contained images of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge," the publisher said.

"Independent Star Limited has no further comment pending conclusion of the joint investigation by the newspaper's shareholders."

The newspaper, co-owned by media baron Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell group and the Irish-based Independent News and Media, was threatened with closure by Mr Desmond after publishing the pictures.

On Mr Desmond’s threat, insiders at his corporation warned: “He says what he means, and means what he says.” The newspaper employs 130 staff and has a circulation of 70,000.

Mr O'Kane's suspension was announced just hours after Ireland's Justice Minister Alan Shatter said he was reviving abandoned privacy laws on the back of the scandal.

Mr Shatter said: “It is clear that some sections of the print media are either unable or unwilling in their reportage to distinguish between prurient interest and the public interest.”

The National Union of Journalists in Dublin criticised Mr Desmond's threat to shut down the Irish operation and accused him of double standards on the basis of some of his business interests, including the adult Television X channel.

In Greece, the Eleftheros Typos newspaper had two photographs of the duchess, one showing her topless, on its front page yesterday.

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